The Quest
by Red Tale
Summary: The Ninja turtles undertake a quest for honor, and learn that nothing is that simple


The Quest By: Red Turtle  
  
Introduction:  
  
First, to get the formalities out of the way, The characters of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle belong to Mirage studios. Because they influence the world we live in, I have created my own stories around them, as many people have, and hopefully the people in charge of Mirage recognize this as a beautiful thing they have inspired to and do not sue us.  
  
In my part of the world, I have created characters of my own that interact with the original turtles in different ways, depending on the story. Generally they take the form of a family of either 6 or 12 ranging in age from 14 to 20. Sometimes they are mutant turtles as well, sometimes they are dragons or demons who share turtle ancestry. In this story there are six, they are all fifteen and they are turtles.  
  
This particular story was designed around a concept I thought about years ago, but I don't know if the customs or rituals mentioned actually exist in real life, as I didn't have time to devote to researching it all, but for all intents and purposes of the story they do exist. The central event was created because that is what the story evolves around, as far as I can tell it nor nothing like it happened in our reality. It makes for a great story though, trust me. I did try to be accurate as far as language and geography go. I will also make another disclaimer at the end, which I can't say now or it would ruin the story.  
  
Part I:  
  
One of the ninjitsu rites Master Splinter had learned about from his former owner was a quest in which students wishing to prove their ultimate honor find an unsolved wrong in the world and spend the rest of their lives correcting it. Killing Oroku Saki did not count because it was Splinters burden, his students needed a quest of their own. Also, part of the honor of the Quest was that it not be anything personal, it was taken up simply for the sake of solving it. Completing this quest then would then become a part of their lives forever. He explained this concept to them on their fifteenth birthday, and all of them were very interested. There was very little adventure in their lives, and they sometimes felt cut out from the world because they couldn't even join a clan in the area.  
  
April helped make the decision easier. She won a vacation from a time- share venture and had decided to go to Tibet. One of the crusades the turtles were considering was avenging the death of fifty monks at a monastery in Tibet three years ago. It was known in English simply as The Tibetan Monastery Massacre. Unknown assailants had burned it to the ground, and many of the monks had been burned alive inside it. Several had also been mutilated and beheaded beforehand. The monastery had no known enemies, and no one had survived to witness.  
  
So, with April able to conveniently get them to Tibet, they decided to commit to that task, and after committing to it they could not ever abandon it, or they would loose honor. Much importance was stressed on this by Splinter, and they took it very seriously. They would spend the rest of their lives hunting down those responsible, and they weren't going to just kill them, they were even going to attempt to perform a ritual in which they would banish the souls of those responsible from reincarnation or nirvana.  
  
Part II  
  
Aprils method of getting them to Tibet consisted of them stuffing themselves in boxes and being shipped as her luggage. She had won four airline tickets, but of course they couldn't go on the actual plane with her. She took Casey and sold the other two, using the money from them to pay for the shipping cost of two huge boxes. Only the turtles went, Master Splinter stayed behind so that they could complete the quest on their own, making the quest a rite of passage for them into adulthood. Once in Lhasa, Tibet, they set out to find the remains of the monastery and learn more about it. They only needed to meet with April two weeks later to be reshipped to New York.  
  
They disguised themselves in cloaks and traveled to the distant monastery. They needed to use Yaks for much of the travel, and fortunately April had given them enough money to do that. It took a day and a half to arrive at the site.  
  
No memorial marked the burned remains of the monastery. I had been huge in its time. Other than nature, nothing had disturbed the site. Even the cremated ashes were left to scatter across the country. Donatello spent several hours trying to determine where and how the fire had started, which he did determine to be in two areas near what would have been the main hall. Leonardo tried to meditate at the spot and find answers that way. Raph was disappointed because to him it didn't look like much, a big area cluttered with charred walls and furniture. Any treasure was long removed, and even any blood or bodies had been burned or decomposed, so it wasn't very interesting. Mike felt very touched by seeing the spot and what happened, and started writing a poem about it.  
  
They hadn't realized how much time had passed while they were there, and lost in their own thoughts of the massacre they weren't paying much attention. Evening came, and finally Raph suggested they find somewhere to spend the night. Before any one came up with any suggestions, Mike alerted them to a team of four people approaching from the distance. They quickly removed the yaks and any other signs they had been there, and hid in trees close to the monastery.  
  
"This is the place", one of the strangers explained to the others, "Fifty monks were burned to death here, some of them mutilated and killed before the fire."  
  
The other three strangers paused to take in the ruins.  
  
"How could an army have overrun the monastery with out any one seeing them?", one of the strangers asked.  
  
"It is not clear that it was an army that did it. The monastery was very well guarded, and had few enemies except for those opposed to Buddhism. The nearby village heard no warning bells, no cannon fire, nothing. It is suspected that the attackers lived in the monastery itself."  
  
"What of the rumors of children with in the monastery, children who were never found", another one asked.  
  
"I have heard the rumors, but I never saw any children in my time here. And children could not have committed atrocities like this", the guide replied.  
  
"They might know what happened. They might have witnessed it."  
  
"The villagers say that, the mourning after the attack, an old man was missing as well. Has any one pursued a connection with him?", another asked.  
  
"The old man moved to India to stay with his brother who is now dead. He was questioned and it was determined his departure was purely coincidental. He was seen at the village that night, so he was not part of the massacre and was followed for a time and found to have no connections with any group who might have done this."  
  
There was silence for a long while.  
  
"If his brother is dead, why did he never move back?", one finally asked, "I think its suspicious."  
  
"Your welcome to meet him yourself, if you want. You can search his place if he'll let you. I don't believe the answer lies with him. I think it was assassins, Christian assassins who were too cowardly to take credit for the death. This was an organized act, not the work of an old peasant."  
  
"All the same, what was the man's name again?"  
  
"Yahn. The last I heard, he was staying in Vasco Da Gama, in Goa."  
  
The strangers stayed about another half-hour, but provided no more revelations to the turtles. They sorted through the remains, prayed and left together.  
  
Part III  
  
They discussed among each other all they had learned from the strangers, and the next day they spent investigating all of it from other sources and found it to be true. The massacre did look like an inside job, but all of the monks living there were accounted for among the dead. There were rumors of mysterious children living in the Monastery, but no children were among the dead or documented to live at the Monastery. There was an old man who left from the village and was determined not to be involved. But Leonardo felt an intuition surrounding him, and as they had no other leads to follow and a week at least before they needed to leave for New York, and because this quest was so important to them, they decided to travel to Goa and try to find the man and learn whatever he knew.  
  
It took two days to get there, mostly by jumping on a train headed there and not getting caught. Then they needed to familiarize themselves with the area. Donatello was quicker to learn some of the Hindi language and figure out the maps they had for tourists, and within several hours they had approximated the neighborhood the man was last known to live in. From here they spread out, searching on their own and keeping an ear out for him name.  
  
They rejoined on a rooftop three hours later, not having found him yet. Night had fallen, and they had decided to sleep above the city. The buildings were not as high here as in New York, but they felt safe and it was better than the sewers, which they quickly learned were way worse here than New York. They kept the cloaks on so they wouldn't be recognized, and decided to have a guard through out the night since they were unfamiliar with the city. Michelangelo kept the first watch.  
  
Mike enjoyed this guard duty. He found the city beautiful, not as mean as New York. Together with the seriousness of the quest they had taken up, and being fifteen, it inspired him and he worked on several poems trying to express this.  
  
Part IV  
  
About an hour after all his brothers had been soundly asleep, Mike was hit in the head with a rock. He turned to where the rock had come from, and suddenly was tackled side he wasn't looking at. He was pinned down and muffled so he couldn't alert his brothers. While his attackers tied him, he saw four more figures surrounding his brothers as they slept.  
  
Leo suddenly sprang into action, obviously surprising the attackers. But they had weapons and training as well, and when Leo focused on one with his sword, that one had him matched blow to blow with his own sword. Mike was tied and rendered useless, so the two on him attacked Raphael before he could respond, and two others seized upon Donatello. The one was fighting with Leo and another was watching instead of helping. All of the attackers wore full, brightly colored hooded cloaks.  
  
After tying up his brothers, the others did not join in the fight between Leo and the other sword wielder. Leo hadn't noticed, he was consumed with this fight. Only Shredder or Splinter had ever matched him like this, and he was determined to win. Likewise, his opponent was impressed with Leo's skill and wanted to finish the fight.  
  
The match between Leo and the Other continued for a full fifteen minutes. Both of them were performing very fast, very complicated moves and hadn't so much as made a nick on each other. They were getting out of breathe now.  
  
Almost at the same time, they stepped away from each other to try to breathe. It didn't look like either would win the battle.  
  
"What's your name?", the other asked Leo.  
  
"Leonardo", Leo answered between pants. He decided to try an intimidation technique and removed the hood from his cloak so they could see he was a turtle.  
  
All six made some form of astonishment. Then Leo moved in again on his opponent, to catch him while off guard.  
  
"Wait!", his opponent asked, but Leo didn't.  
  
The fighting began, but his opponent wasn't fighting with the same desire as before. Now he was more deflecting Leo's blows but not moving in himself. Finally another of the figures moved in between them.  
  
"Wait! Stop! We won't fight you anymore!", he said.  
  
Leo stopped, annoyed at what he now saw as a fight for honor. Than his opponent and the others removed their hoods.  
  
They were also mutant turtles.  
  
Part V  
  
After that revelation, they proceeded to untie all the ninja turtles and apologized for hitting Mike in the head.  
  
"We're sorry", one of them said heavily accented, "We needed money. We were going to rob you."  
  
That didn't make it much better for the ninja turtles, but looking closure it was obvious these six were close to starving. Their cloaks were in good shape because they were recently stolen, but otherwise they had very little to their name.  
  
"Where did you guys come from?", Mike asked.  
  
"Isn't it polite to start with names?", one of them responded, also accented. They hadn't had a real conversation with anyone outside their family in at least two years, and weren't about to relate their whole history right now.  
  
"Oh, sorry. My names Michealangelo. Where did you guys come from?"  
  
"Mike-a-what-o?", one asked.  
  
"Just call me Mike", he said.  
  
"I didn't really get your name either", Leos' opponent said.  
  
"Leo", Leo responded.  
  
"Can you guys handle Raphael?", Raph asked.  
  
"Well, forgive us, we speak Tibetan first, then Hindi, and then English. Spanish is way out there for us", a black-haired one explained, "I speak the best English, let me try."  
  
"It's not Spanish, its Italian", Donatello explained, "And my name is Donatello."  
  
Blank stared met him.  
  
"Dona-tello", The best-English-speaking one repeated carefully.  
  
"You can call me Don if its easier."  
  
"It is", he agreed.  
  
"Can we call you Dona?", two of them asked at once, and then giggled. One of the others smacked them.  
  
"I'm Necromancer", Leo's opponent announced, "But since we're all using nick-names, you can call me Nikki. This is my good brother, Darinatowalexiandelo, but you can call him Darin if its easier (he grinned), my bad brothers Jordan and Torrance, or Jory and Tory, my good little brother Simon and my good sister Molly. I don't think there are nick names for those in English."  
  
"No, there aren't", Leo told him.  
  
"So, Nikki, Darin, Jory, Tory, Simon and, uh, Molly?", Mike tried to keep everyone straight and make sure that one was, indeed, a teenage female.  
  
"Yes, that's right. And you are Leo, Mika, Rapheel and Don?", Simon clarified.  
  
"Mike and Raphael", Don corrected him.  
  
"Just call me Raph", Raph sighed, rolling his eyes.  
  
"Your names sound English", Leo pointed out to them.  
  
"My name is, and Molly and Jordan and Torrance. Necromancer and Darin are Russian. Our (awkward pause) that is the people who named us didn't want to name us in their language", Simon explained hesitantly.  
  
Nikki frowned at the remembrance of these people. The ninja turtles picked up that this was an unpleasant past.  
  
"Well, lets have dinner, yes? That is polite thing to do", Molly invited in her best English.  
  
"It's past midnight", Mike pointed out, not because he didn't want food, he just wasn't sure it should be called dinner.  
  
"We'll have tea, then", Simon said happily, "We live here. You can stay with us."  
  
"We actually have a home", Leo said, "We live in New York. But we would love to have tea with you."  
  
PART VI  
  
They all went together to the other turtles home, which was a huge underground area accessed by a hole under one of the bridges. It used to be a water treatment facility twenty years ago, but as technology and the city had increased it had been abandoned and most likely forgotten about, making it a very useful home. It mostly consisted of one big room where they all ate, slept, and practiced their fighting ability. There were three smaller rooms, one of which was allotted to Molly to put girly things in and to get away from her brothers, and the other two had been taken over by Simon to store books and experiments in where the others wouldn't accidentally mess them up. No one else saw a need for a separate room of their own, they kept their few things by their beds and weren't too worried about loosing them. There was not much in the way of furniture, the city of Vasco Da Gama is not as wasteful with its possessions as New York. There was tea, and a half bag of rice and some vegetables. There was no refrigerator, but a cooking area had been set up that allowed fire with out the smoke betraying their location. Since the city and the sewers were set up differently, there was not the benefit of hooking into electricity or water. They used the nearby river for their water needs.  
  
Along the way Simon had gotten to know Donatello enough to guess he would be interested in things like an antique chess game, books on quantum physiques, calculations of weather based on star patterns and the like, and immediately set about showing him these things when they got in. The other turtles made themselves comfortable in the big room while Nikki prepared them all tea and offered some rice. Molly and the twins knew the least English and the conversations needed to go slower to include them. Nikki knew a lot of English but preferred to communicate with Leo by pantomiming different moves they knew, and actually they learned quite a bit from each other that way. Darin was able to talk to Mike and Raph about The Terminator, which he had seen once in a movie theater and had forever wanted to discuss it. Neither family got into their history at the moment.  
  
Simon knew the most English but still couldn't say everything he wanted to, so he handed Donatello a lot of books and looked to see how interested he was. Then they started playing chess, which didn't need a lot of words and Simon knew all of them anyway.  
  
"So you speak Tibetan?", Donatello asked him.  
  
"Yes. That's the language I was born with."  
  
"Can you teach it to me?", Donatello asked eagerly.  
  
Simon paused sadly.  
  
"Oh, Don, I don't think you want to learn it from me."  
  
"Why not? There's a lot of history written in Tibetan, and some parts of the Buddhist religion are only known in Tibetan. I've been thinking about it before I came here."  
  
"You are a Buddhist?", Simon asked, almost accusingly but managed to keep it friendly at the last minute.  
  
"No, my sensei is, and he might appreciate it if I learned more."  
  
"Sensei? What is that, Japanese? Like Ninja?"  
  
"Yeah, were all ninjas. What are you guys?"  
  
"Nikki.he knows all the fighting, all the ninja he knows. I don't fight, like, uh, professional. Me, I just fight for food."  
  
"Oh", Donatello sighed. Him and his brothers had sometimes been close to starving, but had never needed to rob anyone. Splinter had stolen food though.  
  
"But Buddhists aren't Ninja", Simon pointed out.  
  
"My sensei is. He only fights for good, and he tries to be non violent. He meditates a lot."  
  
Simon thought about this as they played. Donatello was winning.  
  
"So, why don't you want to teach me any Tibetan?", Donatello asked. He was a little insulted by Simon's refusal.  
  
"Because the Tibetan language is spoken differently by everyone. The form of it that is used in the religion and history is different then the form that I speak."  
  
Simon was growing uncomfortable with the direction of conversation.  
  
"Different how?", Donatello inquired.  
  
"In Tibet, the language is divided by class. So, I would be teaching you the slave version. You couldn't read the history or religion with that, and some people wouldn't understand you at all, because they only speak the higher class."  
  
Donatello processed this information slowly and in growing shock. The idea coming to him, the visuals.  
  
"Were you a slave?", he whispered.  
  
Simon stopped pretending to play chess.  
  
"I want to talk about something else", he insisted.  
  
"Simon.I.", Donatello started to say something expressing how he felt about this information. These poor turtles!  
  
"Let's go sit with my family. I think the tea is done. The conversation is more pleasant there, I'm sure", Simon said, and tried to pull Donatello out.  
  
"Simon, wait. I didn't know. Please, just talk to me-"  
  
"No, Dona-tello, I've said enough. It was years ago, and we don't like to talk about it."  
  
Simon determinedly joined his family, trusting Donatello wouldn't bring it up in front of everyone, which he didn't. Everyone was falling asleep anyway, and there wasn't much more talking that night.  
  
Part VII  
  
They all woke up late the next mourning. The conversations continued to be along the lines of culture, food, and weather. Nikki in particular was very good at steering the conversation away from things relating to anyone's past, and since there was so much to talk about and everything was so new it wasn't hard. They had more rice, vegetables and tea for breakfast, and Molly shared a store of chocolate she had in her room. After that, Nikki practiced ninjitzu with the ninja turtles. He didn't join them for their meditations though, which they saw as an integral part of the practice (especially Leo). Nikki seemed annoyed by their devotion.  
  
While they were practicing, the twins left and returned with a supply of potatoes, a bag of oranges and a large piece of meat which they started cooking in a pot. The ninja turtles all knew they had stolen it, but weren't sure how to help them not have to steal, particularly while they were staying with them and eating all their food. Leo decided to buy them all pizza that night, that would at least be one honest meal. He was already trying to figure out how to take them back to New York.  
  
Consumed with the excitement of meeting these six new members of their species, all the ninja turtles had forgotten about their quest until well into the evening, over the pizza dinner they had bought. The others had never had pizza, Simon had to explain it to them in their Tibetan language (which now Donatello dreaded hearing, knowing what it meant their lives had been like). Nikki didn't understand the ninja turtles love for a giant cracker with cheese and tomato, but figured it was an American thing and would make them feel more at home. Their aren't a lot of pizzerias in Vasco Da Gama, and the only one they could find with in a reasonable distance carried very different pizzas than the ninja turtles were used to. They decided on a very large Thai Chicken Pizza, which has peanut sauce instead of tomato sauce. Mike figured that the other turtles would appreciate the Thai heritage of it. He could get them real pizza back in New York, which he already decided they were all going to live.  
  
At the lair of the other turtles, they sat around and ate the pizza. There was enough for everyone to have two slices. They had sprung for soda, which the others had never had either. Perhaps it was the taste of his favorite food, which he had last eaten in New York with his Sensei, that jogged Leo's memory back to why he was in India to begin with.  
  
"Hey", he inquired between mouthfuls, "You guys are from Tibet originally, right?"  
  
A darkness so subtle that none of the ninja turtles noticed descended over the others. The twins were talking excitedly to Mike in a mixture of Tibetan and English about how much they loved the soda, but their excitement died away.  
  
"Yeah", Nikki answered for them all, "But we haven't lived there in years."  
  
"Do you know anything about The Tibetan Monastery Massacre?"  
  
All six froze. They knew that name in any language. Darin was in mid chew and suddenly couldn't swallow. He spat his food into a napkin and stared. The twins nervously looked away from them, no longer eager to discuss the soda. Simon and Molly visibly cringed together, there eyes as wide as saucers. Only Nikki regained his composure, but it was very different than how he had been talking before. He almost forced food into his mouth and too casually replied.  
  
"No. Why don't you tell us about it?"  
  
Donatello didn't notice the drastic change because he was sitting between Nikki and Simon and not facing any of them, but his brothers noticed because they sat opposite.  
  
"Three years ago a monastery was burned to the ground, and fifty monks were murdered in the process. As part of our ninja training, we have undergone a quest to find those responsible for the massacre and annihilate them."  
  
"Annihilate them?", Tory whispered, "What does that mean?"  
  
"We plan to perform a ritual where their souls will be destroyed. They won't be reborn or allowed into heaven", Leo explained.  
  
The twins couldn't follow this. Molly got the gist of it. These new American turtle friends were now talking about killing her and her brothers.  
  
"Simon, what do they mean?", Jory asked worriedly. Simon slowly and carefully translated. Molly, upon hearing the translation and fully understanding, had to put a hand over her mouth to keep from crying out.  
  
"Isn't that a bit much?", Nikki snapped. There was no way for him to change the subject now. What a nightmare, having a pleasant dinner with the only other mutant turtles on the planet and then finding out that they are on a quest to annihilate them.  
  
"For someone who murdered fifty monks? I don't think so", Raphael said.  
  
"Yeah, whoever did this didn't just burn the monastery down. They tortured them and decapitated the bodies. Someone very evil did that", Mike added.  
  
"Do you know who did it?", Nikki asked, even though it was pretty obvious they didn't.  
  
"No", Leo answered, "We investigated the monastery, went to the site and learned that some one who might have been involved had moved here. It's our only clue, so we came here to find them."  
  
"You came all the way from New York to solve this? Why are you so interested in the case? Did you know them?", Nikki inquired. He had stopped forcing food into his mouth.  
  
Leo took a second to answer. All six of them were definitely bothered by this topic. Donatello finally noticed the changed air in discussion, and stopped eating himself.  
  
"It is a matter of honor that we complete this task, even if it takes all our lives to do it. It gives us something to focus on, and measure our status by."  
  
"So, you have no connection to the monks, its just your honor at stake here?", Nikki clarified.  
  
"Our honor as ninja is very important", Leo replied.  
  
"This is very interesting", Nikki remarked, starting to eat again, despite his family's harrowed stares, "Tell me, what happens if you never find out? Do you pick a new quest?"  
  
"No", Leo said, aware that the conversation seemed to be down to him and Nikki, "This is our life quest, and if we die with out solving it we die without that honor."  
  
"Okay", Nikki continued, "What if you were able to solve the quest, but you weren't allowed to kill those responsible. Maybe, if you learned what happened, you wouldn't want to. Would solving the mystery bring you this honor?"  
  
"No. We couldn't accept that. Fifty Monks were killed in cold blood, and we will find those responsible and do everything in our power to punish them. We will do the annihilation on them."  
  
Simon shivered at the mention of 'annihilation'. Darin moved to get up, but Nikki waved him down.  
  
"Hold on, this is really interesting. I want to learn about this", Nikki said, "Now, say someone comes up to you and says, 'I know what happened. I saw the whole thing. I'll tell you everything, but you can't kill or annihilate the person who did it'. You wouldn't accept that?"  
  
"No", Leo answered. He wondered why things seemed to be getting so sour between them. Nikki's interest in the conversation was not a polite one. His questions had a menacing tone to them now.  
  
"Okay. What if it was another monk who did it, and he's already dead. Then what?"  
  
"We can still do the annihilate on them. Our Sensei is researching it. The person who committed that atrocity will be wiped from existence."  
  
Molly embraced Simon and started to cry hidden under his arm. The image of her soul being destroyed by these other turtles was getting to be too much.  
  
"Why are you crying?", Donatello asked. He was affected by how upset they were, and didn't know how to help. He reached out to touch her but she and Simon shied away.  
  
"She doesn't like to hear talks of death", Simon explained hastily, "Maybe I should take her back home-"  
  
"No, Simon, stay", Nikki ordered, "I think we should all hear about this. This commitment to their ninjitzu is very admirable. Something we could really learn from. I got another question for you guys. All of you."  
  
"Okay", Leo agreed wearily.  
  
Nikki took a breathe, exposing for the first time how nervous he was. All his family watched him intensely. Donatello was watching Simon and Molly, and not listening as much. Leo, Raph and Mike remained invested in the conversation.  
  
"Here's a scenario. Let's say you find the guy who did it, the one responsible for these atrocities. But you underestimate him. He's really powerful. So powerful that you can't defeat him. Do you still try?"  
  
"Yes, we try. We've beaten every one of our enemies. We will defeat him as well."  
  
"You sound very confident", Nikki replied, never taking his eyes off Leo as he fiddled with his sheath and slowly removed his dagger. He continued to play with it in his hands.  
  
"We are very confident", Leo answered.  
  
"Well, what if your not that good. What if, despite all your efforts, he's going to kill at least one of you unless you drop your quest. Do you still go on, knowing one of you's going to die?"  
  
"He's a coward", Raphael interrupted, "He can't be better than us."  
  
"We have justice on our side. We have honor. We will track him down and kill him. He won't be able to stop us", Leo asserted.  
  
"For argument sake, say he has, and you have to choose. What to you do?"  
  
"We finish the quest", Leo answered.  
  
"Really? Your brothers going to die and you still won't stop the quest to save him? I don't believe you."  
  
Now Leo was getting angry.  
  
"Your not a ninja. You don't understand", He said.  
  
"You're right I don't", Nikki replied, yawned, stretched, and stood up (The others all stood with him), "Why don't you show me this honor at work."  
  
In a flash Nikki pounced on Donatello, who had still been looking over at Simon and Molly, pulled him up, pushed him against the wall and pinned both his wrists together with one hand. With the other Nikki held the dagger at Donatello's neck. Donatello was too surprised to resist. Simultaneously Darin, Jory and Tory drew their weapons. Simon and Molly moved back, not wanting to be involved until necessary.  
  
"Please don't hurt him, Nikki", Simon whispered, but only Molly heard him.  
  
Leo, Raph and Mike had immediately sprung up and drew their weapons. Leo had sensed Nikki's growing animosity, but had not been prepared for an attack like this.  
  
"Let him go", Leo said.  
  
"No, Leo, this is what I was talking about. I want to see you choose. All of you, either give up your quest now, or at least one of your brothers is going to die. You make a move and I kill Don, and we might kill the rest of you too. We're pretty well matched."  
  
To emphasize his point, Nikki made a quick slash above Donatello's heart. It was very light, hardly drawing blood but resulting in a startled cry, which is what Nikki was really aiming for. He wanted to only hurt Don enough to force his brothers to give up, but he had to make it clear he would kill him before he allowed the ninja turtles to perform this annihilation. Don tried to struggle free but his hands were held fast by Nikki, who besides being a skilled fighter was also slightly bigger and stronger than he was. He couldn't even get his feet up to kick free.  
  
Michelangelo threw his weapons down.  
  
"I give it up. Let him go", He pleaded.  
  
Raph and Leo were not that easily won.  
  
"A real evil mastermind isn't going to give you this much time to choose", Nikki said after ten seconds, "Come on, how much do you have to think about it? The big bad guy is going to kill your brother if you don't give up your quest."  
  
"Why are you doing this?", Leo hissed. It was too much, a nice, peaceful dinner with other turtles there own age, and now it had turned into his worse nightmare.  
  
"I'll tell you when this is over. I'll tell you everything. But not if I have to kill you."  
  
He tightened his grip on Donatello and whipped the dagger closure to his neck, obviously inflicting great pain and eliminating any doubt that he would kill him. Darin, Jory, and Tory focused on Leo and Raph. They didn't want to see Nikki torturing Donatello, and they wanted to be prepared to move in case Raph or Leo didn't give in. Simon and Molly held each other and forced themselves to watch. If Nikki had to kill Donatello there would be a fight between their families for sure, and they would have to join. At that point it would be kill or be killed.  
  
Raph put his sias away and joined Mike.  
  
"I give it up", he said. He had come up with another quest. He would kill Nikki for doing this.  
  
"What about you, Leo?", Nikki asked.  
  
Leo was visibly wavering. He blinked a tear out of his eyes and tried to find a way to get through this with honor. But deep down he couldn't let Donatello be killed, and the resulting bloodbath between his family and theirs. If he didn't give the quest up, and Nikki killed Donatello over it, he would have to kill Nikki, and then of course they would all have to kill each other.  
  
Darin saw that Leo was very close, and decided to give him a little mental push, even though it would mean totally eliminating the possibility of the two families ever being friends again. He took his sword and pressed it into Donatello's chest, while Nikki's dagger was still at his throat. Donatello squealed, cut short by the dagger. That was all Leo needed.  
  
"Stop! Let him go!", He cried. Throwing his katanas on the ground.  
  
"Say you give up your quest", Nikki ordered.  
  
"I give it up. Let him go."  
  
"So, by your honor, you will no longer hunt the ones responsible for the Tibetan Monastery Massacre?"  
  
"No, I will not", Leo confirmed.  
  
Darin withdrew his blade and Nikki loosened his grip and took the dagger away.  
  
"Don, I almost forgot to ask you. Will you give up this quest or do you want us to kill you for it?"  
  
"I-I give it up", Donatello choked out. He couldn't believe Nikki had done this. And Simon stood by and let him.  
  
Nikki released Donatello, who went by Michelangelo and took several breathes. He was trembling now. They all were.  
  
"Why did you do this?", Leo asked, struggling for words, "Why did you end our quest? Why would you kill Donatello over this?"  
  
Having succeeded in his mission, Nikki was now more calmer.  
  
"Because we are the ones who killed the monks", he answered.  
  
All the air seemed to leave Leonardo. Even after Nikki's attack he had not been prepared for this.  
  
"You?", he gasped.  
  
"You said you were going to annihilate us. I couldn't let you do that. I gave you all the chances I could to get you to give it up peacefully and you wouldn't. So I forced you", Nikki explained, and then after a moment, "I'm sorry, Dona-tello. We value your friendship. It was the only way I saw to resolve this, to make you give it up."  
  
Donatello gingerly examined his cuts and said nothing.  
  
"You killed those Monks?", Mike exclaimed, "But, three years ago, you would have just been.children."  
  
"The rumors were about you", Leo said.  
  
"You were their slaves", Donatello said now, looking at Simon. His mind was whirling from Nikki's attack and from the information that was coming together.  
  
"You were slaves?", Michelangelo gasped, "To monks? Monks don't have slaves."  
  
"Yes they do, usually there human", Simon explained, "We don't know how they acquired us, we've been there since we were born. They believed we were bad incarnations, so it didn't matter."  
  
"They kept us in secret, no one outside the monastery knew about us", Darin added, "Except sometimes some of the village children would come to serve the monks, and they would learn about us."  
  
"Why-", Leo started to ask, it was hard to come to terms with all this, "Why did you kill them? Why didn't you just run away?"  
  
No one said anything for a minute. Molly cried harder.  
  
"Three years ago we were twelve. One of the monks tried to rape Molly. That was it, we had it when that happened", Nikki explained.  
  
"And the mutilations?", Leo asked.  
  
"Once we killed the first one, it all just happened so fast", Nikki tried to explain the rush of it, how it wasn't planned, how it felt to be free.  
  
"We did most of the-", Jory and Tory started to say, and not remembering the word 'mutilations' pantomimed decapitations and the like.  
  
"Yeah, that was only Jory and Tory that did that stuff. Darin and Nikki just killed them straight, and Molly and I locked the great hall and started the fires", Simon explained.  
  
"We're sorry it wasn't very honorable", Nikki said, "But we were twelve, and we were angry."  
  
There was silence for a while.  
  
"Are you going to kill us?", Molly finally whimpered.  
  
"No", Leo told her. Even Raph had abandoned his rage at Nikki. He didn't forgive him, but had decided not to kill him.  
  
"What are you going to do?", Nikki asked.  
  
"I don't know", Leo sighed, "But we can't stay here. We'll just need some time to think about it. I wasn't prepared for this."  
  
'Yeah, no shit', Mike, Raph and Don each echoed in their heads.  
  
The ninja turtles started to leave out the door.  
  
"We're really sorry, Donatello", Simon emphasized. This time Donatello acknowledged it with a nod but didn't commit to an acceptance.  
  
The End  
  
I actually wasn't sure how to end or continue it. Maybe you all could give some ideas if you feel passionately about it.  
  
*Not all Buddhist monasteries are evil slave holding institutions, but part of the story was based on stories of people from Tibet who had similar experiences in terms of the language barriers and the intimidation by some monasteries, especially when it is the only religious choice for some areas. Its partly a story about how things are perceived, and also how people can practice the same religion and have very different beliefs with in it (like how there are Christians who believe in loving and helping others and fundamentalist ones who believe everyone is going to hell, or Jews who believe in the existence of Israel and ones who believe in the existence of Palestine). There are Buddhists who practice non-violence everywhere and believe in equality and ones who hold more discriminatory practices like that women are lesser incarnations (I've read this myself!) and animals are unworthy, ect. So this story is not meant to be a diss on Buddhism, its just that I heard these experiences and I just thought about how nothing is ever all good everywhere all the time, and that got the whole plot going about taking something as seemingly totally unquestionable as the massacre and mutilation of a monastery, and making it questionable. I principally chose Buddhism because its revered peacefulness to the general world made for great irony, and not because I have anything against the religion personally. Most people I know who practice or at least research it are good, honest people. 


End file.
